Re: FBI MoneyPak Scam - Removing Virus

That's an unknown I'm afraid as they morph constantly. It obviously didn't this time but could the next unless a new variant suddenly appears. None of the major antivirus applications are 100% effective against these fake anti-malware pests unfortunately, hence the need for specialist tools.

Re: FBI MoneyPak Scam - Removing Virus

The FBI are suddenly very interested in this variant of the ransomware/scareware scam that's been plaguing European users for at least a couple of years. This is probably because large numbers of people hit by this scam have contacted the FBI to complain about it.

Brian Krebs has belatedly turned his attention to this ongoing operation, and has written an informative piece about the organisation of this criminal operation. There's a useful little diagram cribbed from 'botnets.fr' which identifies most of the elements of the operation as being based in Russia and Ukraine (oh, what a surprise), but shows that parts of it rely on a US and UK presence. The US-based botnets that run the Blackhole Exploit kit (by which most users become infected) gives the FBI a legal basis for pursuing a robust international investigation. The results of that investigation will probably lead to arrests in a year or two.

This scam persuades only a small percentage of those infected and seeing the threatening message to pay up, but that small percentage still generates an income of about $40,000 to $50,000 a day. No wonder the new variants keep being rolled out.

Edit :

Most BlackHole exploits succeed because they find a PC has an outdated version of Java installed, as can be seen from this section of a screenshot of a BlackHole exploit control panel, obtained by Kafeine, of botnets.fr :

The advice about Java is worth repeating : if you need it, keep it updated. Updates to Java fix known security weaknesses, and are frequent. If you don't need it, uninstall it (I removed it, and haven't needed it since I did so).

Two very important things to realise about this seemingly-straightforward ransom demand :

... the latest Reveton versions will steal all passwords stored on the victim’s PC. What’s more, the FBI’s report indicates Reveton is being bundled with Citadel, which is an extremely powerful and advanced family of malware that can be quite difficult to remove.

(From Brian Krebs' article)

Citadel is the successor to Zeus, and is designed to steal online banking credentials. So an infected system is hit with three related attacks - the initial (and profitable) ransom demand, theft of passwords, and installation of malware to compromise online banking.

The Citadel malware is a close cousin of the Zeus crimeware kit and typically is used as a banker Trojan, stealing users' online banking credentials and allowing attackers to drain victims' bank accounts.

Re: FBI MoneyPak Scam - Removing Virus

Look in the last part of the lower link in my signature below for Hijackthis or DDS and post the log as instructed there on one of the specialist forums. They'll take a look and give advice accordingly.

Re: FBI MoneyPak Scam - Removing Virus

I have this same virus as well. The problem I am having is that once I login FBI notice pops up and will not allow me to get to my homescreen or start up Task Manager. Any ideas how to bypass this screen so I can at least try to remove it?